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  • 1996
  • Not Rated
  • 1 h 31 m
  • 1996
  • Not Rated
  • 1 h 31 m
The Neon Bible

Summary While on a train, a teenage boy thinks about his life and the flamboyant aunt whose friendship acted as an emotional shield from his troubled family. This film evokes the haunting quality of memory while creating a heartfelt portrait of a boy's life in a rural 1940s Southern town.

Directed By: Terence Davies

Written By: John Schulte, John Kennedy Toole, Terence Davies

  • 1996
  • Not Rated
  • 1 h 31 m
  • 1996
  • Not Rated
  • 1 h 31 m
The Neon Bible
Metascore Mixed or Average Based on 14 Critic Reviews
60
User Score Available after 4 ratings
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Summary While on a train, a teenage boy thinks about his life and the flamboyant aunt whose friendship acted as an emotional shield from his troubled family. This film evokes the haunting quality of memory while creating a heartfelt portrait of a boy's life in a rural 1940s Southern town.

Directed By: Terence Davies

Written By: John Schulte, John Kennedy Toole, Terence Davies

Top Cast

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Critic Reviews

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Metascore
Mixed or Average Based on 14 Critic Reviews
60
50% Positive
7 Reviews
43% Mixed
6 Reviews
7% Negative
1 Review

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews

Critic Reviews

 View All
Metascore
Mixed or Average Based on 14 Critic Reviews
60
50% Positive
7 Reviews
43% Mixed
6 Reviews
7% Negative
1 Review

  • All Reviews
  • Positive Reviews
  • Mixed Reviews
  • Negative Reviews
80
The Neon Bible is elegiac, formal and sometimes boldly stylized. The result is an extraordinary experience in which the familiar is made deeply and effectively unsettling.
By Kevin Thomas FULL REVIEW
75
A lyrical work of sporadic great power, Neon Bible captures both the neon and the spirit, the heaven and hell.
By Michael Wilmington FULL REVIEW
75
There are many fleeting poetic moments in The Neon Bible--moments so ecstatic that you may feel yourself rising off your seat. And if much of the rest of the movie tends to be clunky as narrative, that's a small price to pay for pieces of enlightenment you can happily carry around inside your head for months.
By Jonathan Rosenbaum FULL REVIEW
50
For about the first half hour, Davies and his superb creative team weave a potent spell. But, starting with a poorly staged revival meeting sequence, things start to go wrong; Davies's grip slackens, and the artifice overwhelms the perilously slim storyline.
By David Stratton FULL REVIEW
50
Davies tells David's story in a striking series of tableaux and dioramas, all impeccably executed to the last detail. As in Martin Scorsese's work, there's a great deal of control in Davies' directorial style, to the point that it seems totally lacking in spontaneity. But unlike a Scorsese movie, The Neon Bible implodes rather than explodes.
By Steve Davis FULL REVIEW
50
When a poetically inclined film fixates on the same image too often, it is a sign that the movie may have succumbed to its own dreamy esthetic. That is one of the problems of The Neon Bible, the English director Terence Davies's hallucinatory portrait of the American South half a century ago.
By Stephen Holden FULL REVIEW
38
Nominally set in some rural American backwater, The Neon Bible is a hellishly muddled reprint of Davies' personal canon - muddled enough to turn all his past virtues into present transgressions. [19 Apr 1996]
By Rick Groen FULL REVIEW

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Details

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Production Company Channel Four Films, Scala Productions, Screen Partners Ltd., Iberoamericana Films Producción, Academy Pictures, Three Rivers Production, European Script Fund
Release Date Mar 1, 1996
Duration 1 h 31 m
Rating Not Rated
Genres
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Awards

Valladolid International Film Festival
• 1 Win & 2 Nominations
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Nomination

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